This week I was excited to meet an agency 100% focused on using digital and social media to follow the money, not to follow trends. We spent a morning with George and Matt of Brooklyn Brothers, a global agency that blends PR, social, digital, experiential and brand advertising, as part of our annual brandgym partner retreat. They took us through a series of case studies to illustrate an approach they call 'Blockbuster branding', including a highly-awarded campaign for Inspired by Iceland that I talk about below.

1. Follow the money

I've expressed serious concerns about brands' use of social media over recent years, as regular readers will know from my rants. My main issue has not been with social media per se, but rather the tendency of companies to follow trends rather than follow the money, when using it. Many social media experts sell the need to 'engage audiences', 'create conversation' and 'build buzz', but often fail to show how these benefit the bottom line.

In contrast, the Iceland tourism campaign is firmly rooted in hardcore business reality. The first 'chapter' of the campaign in 2010 started after the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökulll volcano. This led to negative stories about Iceland and a projected £180m shortfall in revenue. Iceland needed to act fast to address this image issue. They lacked the budget to use mainstream TV and this led to a social and digital focused campaign, but one firmly focused on driving visitor numbers. 22.5 Million stories were spread worldwide bringing an extra £165m to the Icelandic economy with a ROI of 61:1.

2. Build on a brand truth

A lot of social media content still seems to be 'sponsored entertainment' with little link back to the brand. The Inspired by Iceland campaign was rooted in a band truth that the country had the highest level of positive recommendation at over 80%. This led to the idea of tapping into this goodwill by encouraging people to tell their positive stories to the world, using a variety of social media tools across Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo.

But the Iceland campaign avoided the mistake of focusing on existing users. Yes, the idea was to capture positive stories from visitors, but with the objective of using these stories to reach a broader audience and drive penetration.

3. Fresh consistency

Subsequent chapters had consistency with the same brand idea, Inspired by Iceland, and distinctive tone-of-voice: warm, welcoming, with a humorous wink of the eye. Freshness has come from each chapter focusing on a specific business issue. A second chapter encouraged people to visit Iceland out of the peak summer season; the country's infrastructure was struggling to cope with the increased numbers of summer visitors. And a third chapter was aimed at inspiring visitors to go to discover less well known areas of the country.

4. Build brand fame with distinctiveness

By being highly distinctive, the Inspired by Iceland campaign built 'brand fame' beyond what would be expected for the relatively limited investment . For example, the first chapter was kick-started with a world-first where the entire country was stopped for an hour – ‘Iceland Hour’ – to allow time for people in the country to share their stories.

The subsequent chapter to drive regional visits made fun of the fact that Guð­mund­ur is a very common name in Iceland. A distinctive band property called 'Ask Guð­mund­ur' was created: the world's first 'human search engine'! Each of seven regions had a local speci­alist called Guð­mund­ur who would answer questions sent in on social media. Over 1000 questions from more than 50 countries were received throug­hout the campaign. Importantly, Brooklyn Brothers 'curate and amplify' content like this to get impact beyond this relatively small group of active participants. They 'ignite' a campaign by reviewing the content created, selecting the best and then amplifying it by giving more exposure.

5. 'Distribution first'

Another issue I've raised is brand team creating content and then crossing their fingers in the hope that they win 'the viral lottery' with millions of view. And even when teams get lucky and their film does get shared and viewed, the audience tends to be un-planned and may not reach the right people.

Brooklyn Brothers address this issue with an approach called 'Distribution first'. Through a network of contacts with social and digital media platforms they plan in from the start how the content will be distributed. They make the bold guarantee that the earned media generated will have a value at least three times the money invested. In this way, there a much better shot of generating the right reach for for the brand.

6. Invest in production

A final and important point is the need to invest in high quality production. If you have the ambition of winning what Brooklyn Brother call 'share of culture', not just share of market, then your content needs to be good enough to compete with the best of what is on YouTube, Facebook and other social media, from brands but also TV shows, sports teams and music groups. In the case of Inspired by Iceland, around 40% of the budget went on production, a bigger % of the total budget than might be expected for a traditional communication campaign.

In conclusion, Inspired by Iceland shows how you can harness the potential of social and digital media to boost brand and business performance. The key is to root campaigns on a business issue and brand truth, and build brand fame with distinctive, smartly distributed content.

I'm just back from seeing La La Land with Mrs Taylor and two of my teenage daughters and WOW! What a welcome blast of colour, energy and fun, especially if you are shivering through a freezing cold, post-Brexit, post-Trump winter. We came out wanting to sing and dance and downloaded the soundtrack straight away.

In case you have been living in Outer Mongolia and have not hear of La Land, which won a record-breaking seven Golden Globes, click below to see the trailer and read on for some life lessons from the film.

1. Refresh something you love

La Land is the perfect example of rejuvenating a category, in this case the screen musical. Director Damien Chapelle cleverly looked back at what made the genre famous during Hollywood’s 'Golden Age', such as sound stage fantasies, montages of the city’s neon lights and big set-piece dance numbers. But he also created a romantic relationship that feels modern. He explained his approach in an interview in The Independent: “Trying to call back certain things from the past that I felt had been lost and didn’t need to be lost ... and updating those things.”

2. Stamina is key to success

Damien wrote the screenplay for La La Land way back in 2010. He was unable to produce the film for many years. "No studio was willing to finance an original contemporary musical, with no familiar songs to build off a pre-existing fan base," according to this article. Not only was it a musical, it was a jazz musical, which which The Hollywood Reporter called an "extinct genre" according to the same article. And to make things harder, Damien and his composer partner Justin Hurwitz were unknown.

But Damien and Justin kept going. As I was told by my first boss at P&G, "If you feel like you're banging your head on a brick wall, get a crash helmet!" As Damien explained in this interview, "Our stubbornness just paid out. You just don't hang up. You don't take no for an answer."

3. Don't compromise on quality

Even when a studio did finally get interested in La La Land they demanded alterations that Damien felt were "distinctive and pivotal to the storyline" according to this article. "The male lead was asked to be changed from a jazz pianist to a rock musician, the complicated opening number had to be altered, and the story's bittersweet ending needed to be dropped." It would have been tempting to compromise and get your first big Hollywood movie made. But Damien and Justin refused to make the sacrifices requested. Instead, they put La La Land on hold and moved on to another project. This just happened to be another movie masterpiece, Whiplash, which went on to win three Oscars and put the team on the map. This helped give them more leverage to finally get La La Land made the way they wanted.

4. Human connections still matter

The headlines today are full of stories about how robots are going to wipe out millions of white collar jobs. But La La Land shows that human connections will still be key to creativity and innovation, even in an age of big data and artificial intelligence. Damien and Justin met at Harvard, where they explored the concept of a re-booted musical in their senior thesis, through a low-budget musical called Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. I try to tell my daughters that whilst academic achievement is good, in today's hyper competitive and global world its equally important to create and nurture a network of human connections.

La La Land is a bloody brilliant movie that I suggest you go to see tonight, if you haven't already. And the story behind it is inspiring, showing how creative vision, persistence and excellent execution can pay off. At the time of writing the movie has grossed $173million on a relatively modest production budget of $30million.

Byron Sharp's laws of brand growth were challenged in a recent Campain article by Maire Oldham of VCCP, who says that "many of us in advertising and marketing refuse to adopt the professor's arguments as sacrosanct". I started discussing and challenging Byron's laws six years ago in this post. And I take Marie's additions to the debate seriously, as she uses data-based cases from the 2016 IPA Effectiveness Awards.

Marie actually agrees with some of Byron's fundamental points saying, "There are still benefits from investing in big, memorable communications across mass media channels to maximise mental availability and drive penetration". Her challenges are focused on the issue of targeting, on which she quotes Byron as saying, "targeting is a waste of time and reduces brands’ ability to attract more buyers."

Below I look at her points related to targeting: by need, by season, by demographic and by channel.

1. Targeting by NEED: Eurotunnel Le Shuttle

Byron recommends mass marketing rather than targeted marketing. However, a segmented approach helped Eurotunnel deliver 3.2m additional car journeys and £258.7m of incremental profit over a five year period. Tailored messaging and media reached audience segments such as "spontaneous older couples" or "cultured second-homers".

I suggest that a targeted approach worked for Eurotunnel because it is a complex service brand, where needs vary by segment. An older child-less couple is likely to have fundamentally different needs to a large family, in contrast to simpler FMCG categories, like coffee or washing powder, where needs by life-stage are likely to be similar. A targeted approach allows you to tailor promotions, pricing and proposition depending on needs.

To note, even with this targeted approach I would recommend using 'fresh consistency' to have consistent brand properties and positioning to build memory structure, whilst adapting the specific offer and promotion to meet segment needs.

Action: is your brand a complex, service brand where needs differ significantly across segments? If so, more targeted marketing could be a good way of activating the brand and driving sales.

2. Targeting by SEASON: Narellan Pools

Byron advises the need for continuous communication. Yet Australian swimming-pool manufacturer Narellan focused its marketing only when specific climatic conditions were met, which Marie suggests contravenes this rule.

I suggest targeted timing of activity worked for Narellan owing to seasonality linked to climatic conditions. This case is so interesting its worthy of a follow-up post; the brand used sophisticated data mining to understand exactly when to spend their limited budget to maximise conversion from leads to sales.

To note, this is seasonality of the category, not of the brand. In a category where all brands follow seasonality, such as slimming brands advertising post Xmas and pre-Summer, this advantage will be less, and prices to advertise in this peak season will be high.

Action: is there seasonality in your market that is not being leveraged by other brands, allowing you to more tightly focus your spend to get more bang for your buck? If so, how can you use analytics to accurately program your spending?

3. Targeting by DEMOGRAPHIC and SUB-BRAND: Pepsi Max

Byron recommends focusing on marketing that reaches all targets and builds on brand associations. In apparent contradiction to this rule, Maire explains how Pepsi Max brand focused on 18- to 34-year-olds, "creating its own (sub-brand) content around a string of disparate, 'unbelievable' stunts that would entertain" and using "a new media strategy that allocated a bigger role to digital platforms such as YouTube and Facebook to distribute the content, and a lesser one for TV." Over three years the strategy drove £54m of incremental sales, making it the company’s fastest-growing UK cola brand.

I suggest this approach may reflect the weakness of the Pepsis 'parent brand'. Pepsi is in an unusual and difficult situation where the Pepsi "anchor product" is relatively weak. UK figures below suggest Pepsi Max has a bigger user base. Hence, you can see the business sense in 'following the money' to create a distinctive mix for Pepsi Max, given the weakness of the 'parent brand'. Indeed, rather than creating separate sub-brand content for Pepsi Max as Marie suggests, Pepsi only spent on Pepsi Max in 2015, according to this report. Pepsi Max is the brand, it seems.

Its also worth pointing out that the 2015 growth in Pepsi Max sales seemed to have a lot do with ads and sampling for the Cherry variant, under the strapline ‘Maximum cherry, no sugar’, according to this report. Perhaps good old fashioned product and promotion may have as much to do with the growth as sexy social media?

In contrast, look at Coca-Cola's sales figures below. You see that red Coke is much stronger, and Coke's equivalent to Pepsi Max, Coke Zero, is much smaller. Coke is taking a much more Byron-esque approach with its one brand strategy, as I posted on here. It will be interesting to see how this approach plays out in the market place.

Action: be cautious about creating sub-brand mixes that differ radically from the parent brand where your parent brand is strong, and the sub-brand is small, as is the case with Coke. If a sub-brand is big and maybe the most competitive part of your portfolio, it may make sense to 'follow the money' and focus investment on it.

In conclusion, I'd agree with Marie that "Great work requires more than following universal 'laws' and conventional thinking." You also need a good dose of business sense and pragmatism to understand the category and brand specifics. And a blend of strategy and creativity to then develop and execute a winning mix.

A series of photos on my iPhone prompted the Taylor girls to become even more worried about my 'brandaholicism' (an addiction to seeing brandgym blog stories in every part of everyday life). The photos in question were of .... a swimsuit dryer. Yup. You read right. But what the hell was I doing taking photos of one of those?

The dryer below has recently been installed in the changing rooms of my local sports club. And I snapped it on my phone as I think it shows how the principles of brand innovation apply to B2B brands, not only B2C ones. Below I suggest what marketing learnings come from this smart bit of brand innovation by The Swimsuit Dryer (TSD) company.

1. Solve an end-consumer problem

TSD have created a product with a real end-consumer benefit, that they can then sell to their B2B customers. The old dryer in my club was noisy and inefficient. The new dryer quietly hums like a BMW, and fast rotation removes up to 95% of water in under 8 seconds, without heat. Not a huge change at first sight. But drying your swimsuit is one of the last things you do before leaving the club. This makes it quite important owing to 'the peak-end' principle: customer satisfaction from a given experience depends mainly on the peak level of pleasure, and the end level.

2. Get end-consumer insight

Some B2B companies make the mistake of focusing only on understanding their direct customer who buys their products. What you also need is end-consumer insight, in this case to understand the problems with conventional swimsuit dryers 'in-situ'. Its what I call B2B2C; thinking about the whole value chain through to the end experience. This is the approach I am guessing TSD used to create their dryer. According to the company's website, "Our mission was to create a modern, user-friendly solution to drying swimwear through continued research and development and listening to the needs of our customers".

3. Clever use of 'nudging'

It looks like TSD has also harnessed one of the principles of behavioural economics called 'nudging': encouraging a behaviour by using auto-pilot, 'system 1' thinking. The behaviour in this case is getting people to use the dryer for just the right amount of time: long enough to dry your swimsuit, but not too long so you use up more electricity and wear out the parts faster. The nudge uses light. When you press on the lid, the dryer lights up with a cool blue and white glow (see below). After it continues to glow until your eight seconds are up, at which point it the dryer stops and the light goes out.

4. Range extension

TSD have also extended the core range by offering different colours, so their dryers can fit in with the environment of their customers. Another smart bit of core renovation.

In conclusion, The Swimsuit Dryer company have shown that using immersive consumer insight as the springboard for brand renovation applies to B2B brands, not just B2C ones.

Aligning and engaging people is a critical part of delivering brand-led growth. But many senior managers over-rely on communicating the brand vision, rather than living it on a day-to-day basis. An exception to this is Aston Martin's CEO, Andy Palmer, a leader who leads his brand by example, as shown by a recent feature in Aston Martin's AM magazine that I discuss below.

Problem: 'Brandwashing'

A big problem with turning brand vision into action is when senior managers enthusiastically ask everyone to deliver the brand vision, whilst failing to align their own behaviour. This is one of the top reasons for brand visioning projects to fail, according to brandgym research with marketing directors (see below). A real-life example of this happened on a project for a company making savoury crackers. The growth strategy was to convert sliced bread occasions into cracker occasions, especially at lunchtime. We sat through a morning of presentations about the strategy. Then, at the end of the presentation the marketing director invited everyone to join him for lunch, at which point he ushered in … a platter of sandwiches!

Solution: Lead by example'

In a truly 'brand-led business' there is no need to agonise over how to communicate the brand vision and values, as these are visible in the way the brand leaders run things on a day-to-day basis. As one famous quote said, “People may doubt what you say. But they will believe what you DO.”

Andy Palmer's approach to running Aston Martin shows how to lead by example. First, the AM magazine article tells of how Andy broke off from a tour of the brand's factory to chat to a customer about his new car. Not only did he know the customer's name, he knew about his business. "It's a bond you don't see with many other CEOs of luxury brands," comments the author of the article.

But most impressive of all is Andy Palmer's pledge to personally inspect and sign off every one of the first 1,000 new DB11 cars that are rolling out of the factory, "taking hand-on management to a new level for a CEO." He takes 30 minutes to inspect each vehicle, drawing on his engineering training. That's a total of 500 hours spent inspecting and signing off cars, or roughly 50 working days!

Andy is literally putting his name on the line with the new model, as each car has a plaque with his name on it. He's not only talking about the need for ultimate quality, he is demonstrating it with his actions. "I hope my signature will give customers confidence, but they also have my personal email address," he explains.

In conclusion, in order to engage and align your people behind the vision for your brand in 2017, take a leaf from Andy Palmer's book and lead by example. Talk less. Do more.

How refreshing to read in Ad Age that Coke's CMO Marcos de Quinto believes in selling not only emotional 'sizzle', but also product 'sausage', by harnessing media channels including TV, not just digital. Below I share some key points from his recent Beverage Digest conference presentation.

1. Tell a product story

De Quinto seems to share the brandgym philosophy that marketing should balance brand values (sizzle) with product benefits (sausage), avoiding 'sponsored entertainment', where the brand plays a secondary role, not a starring one. "We are re-Coca-Colizing Coca-Cola. We are going to the roots of what made this brand big," he stated. "If you want people to love to drink Coca-Cola, please show in your commercial people who love drinking Coca-Cola."*

We posted earlier about the new 'Taste the Feeling' campaign, which seeks to tell stories with the brand integrated into the storyline. To illustrate the approach, Coke's CMO showed an ad called 'Break Up' that debuted earlier this year (see below). This marked a big change from the previous campaign, 'Open Happiness', which "often pursued loftier concepts with the product sometimes playing a supporting role," as the article stated. De Quito went as far as mocking an old 'Open Happiness' spot that "barely showed the product".

*To note, I'm a fan of starring the product, but in 'Break Up' the Coke bottle is squeezed into almost every single scene ... you can make the brand a hero without going quite this far!

2. Focus on one brand

The "Taste the Feeling" campaign is part of a major strategic shift by Coke to take a "one-brand" approach, as we posted on here. Varieties like Diet Coke and Coke Zero will be part of a single global campaign, rather than running disparate spots. The visual identities of the different products have also been made more consistent, as shown below. This should reduce fragmentation and increase efficiency. The challenge will be having consistency, whilst having enough support to push the individual variants.

3. Use TV for reach and ROI

The article reported how de Quinto defended TV advertising as providing the best bang for the buck. TV is still "very, very critical for our business. TV still offers the best ROI across media channels." He shared data from 2014 showing that Coca-Cola's TV investment returned $2.13 for every dollar spent, compared with $1.26 for digital. We posted recently here on the role TV can still play as part of an multi-channel campaign to drive broad reach.

4. Do fewer, bigger digital initiatives

Its nice to hear that a man who controls a $3.9 billion budget shares some of our questions around the use of social media, and a belief that the bigger opportunity may be to harness digital to upgrade the customer experience as a whole. "We are very seriously trying to transform our company to make it a digital company, but it's not just to put ads in social media," he said. In perhaps the killer quote of his presentation he went on to say, "Social media is the strategy for those who don't have a true digital strategy."

In digital, focus is again key to Coke's approach, with a drive to make it more efficient and less fragmented. "We are investing big amounts of money but probably not in the smartest way," Mr. de Quinto said. He gave the example an estimated 300 apps worldwide, "but most of these apps, they have less than 50,000 users or 100,000 users. That is nothing," he said. David Godsman, a former Bank of America executive, will lead "the digital transformation of global marketing around a single digital marketing agenda," according to an internal memo from de Quinto.

In conclusion, it is encouraging that one of the world's most important CMOs has a pragmatic approach to branding in a digital age, recognising the need for emotion, but to tell a product story, and the opportunity to use digital to transform the customer experience, not just to create social media content.

Guest post by David Nichols, Group Managing Partner and Head of Invention

I decided to go to the UK Marketing Academy’s Inspire Lecture last month in search of inspiration for 2017. The pugnacious Professor of Marketing and sharp-tongued Marketing Week columnist Mark Ritson gave us his top 10 marketing moments of 2016 and did not disappoint. In amongst the cynical side-swipes and diatribes on poor marketing decisions were some great points and inspiration for the new year ahead. The one that I want to focus on was no.10 on his list: what to learn from our collective failure as marketers to forecast Brexit and also the election of Donald Trump.

Market Dis-orientation

Prof Ritson called out our collective lack of market orientation – the subject of the first lecture on his MBA Marketing course. This leads to decision making based on our own views and not those of our target. Mark's point was that this was the error we all made in predicting both the Brexit and Trump results.

The average UK marketer, he stated, is 'Debbie', a 28 yr old female with a degree. Someone who, unsurprisingly, doesn’t quite ‘get’ the dis-enfranchised frustrations of 50+ white men who led the way in both the ‘surprise’ votes (see below for Brexit voting by age). The same issue, Mark went on, applied to the US Presidential elections. In fact, a recent article in The Times made the point that the core Trump voter thought very differently about who should be trusted to run their country. An older, white, male billionaire with little or no political experience was far more trusted than the legion of smug, over-qualified lawyers and politicos that would have formed Clinton's top team.

Be more market oriented

To be market oriented, we need the ability to to wipe our minds clean of our preconceptions, personal bias and even our basic frame of reference. We should be properly naive when we approach a new category or market, or even our own familiar category, at the start of the brand planning process. If we had been correctly oriented to the market we would have see the Brexit result coming, clear as day. We needed to change our basic viewpoint and see the world less like Debbie, and more as a 50-something train driver from the North of England called Bob. We need to respect and like the consumers we are selling to, and not look down on them, as we posted on here.

In conclusion, I took Mark's lecture as a welcome kick in the conscience to get my market orientation right at the start of each engagement. Marketing 101 it may be, but it seems so many of us are over-looking this first vital rung of the brand strategy ladder.

In this first post of 2017, brandgym partner for Latam Diego Kerner proposes some actionable tips to help you implement some new and positive habits in your life, to help you achieve your ambitions for the year: brand, business and personal.

The post is inspired by my personal experiments on establishing habits and learning from “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. This book explores 'the anatomy of habit building' and its application, both with consumers and at a personal level.

Why habits matter

As marketers, we know how habit creation pays off with consumers, attaching your brand to a set of behaviours and routines that repeat over time. Once established, they tend to stick for the long run, meaning that consumers chose your brand almost without thinking about it. Habits are also important as they can drive changes in attitude. Despite traditional beliefs that attitudes precede habits, many human changes actually work the other way round; the habit develops the attitude. For example, I don’t like jogging, but I start doing it and suddenly start enjoying the feeling of exercising.

Whilst it is clear how powerful habits are with consumers, my experience with marketing executives is that they tend to not leverage them to improve their personal performance as leaders

Start with the end in mind

Identify an area in which you are not satisfied or would like to achieve more. It could go from becoming a better listener, to being more effective with the use of time to becoming more fit

Identify the killer habit

Think about which specific habitual set of routines, if implemented, will help you achieve your objective. As an example, for the objective of becoming a better listener it may waiting to talk until the other person finishes speaking.

Reinforce with rewards

Any successful habit shares the same common structure, with rewards playing a key role. Let's explain this through an example, which is aiming to go to the gym at 7AM before work (it is New Year resolution time, after all!):

A TRIGGER cues the behaviour. Here, it could be the alarm beeping at 6:30AM. The trigger pushes a specific SET of BEHAVIOURS, such as waking up, putting your Nikes and having a quick breakfast

No habit is established unless there is a clear REWARD, which could be, physical, emotional or cognitive. Back to the gym, the reward may be having breakfast reading the paper in our preferred coffee shop or the addictive, endorphin-driven feeling experienced after exercising hard

The more the habit is repeated the more you build a BRIDGE between the trigger and the reward. This creates a 'craving' to receive the reward that ensures the routine/behaviours will be performed over and over.

One habit at a time

Establishing one habit is already quite challenging. So stick to one and only one habit at a time. After you are sure this habit is part of your life, you can then move to another habit.

Take a 40-day challenge

There is a popular culture rule used by The Art of Living, who teach people how to incorporate meditation in their lives. It says that any habit needs 40 days of continuous effort to be firmly established, without failing on a single day.

Get a partner

Yes, why not asking a friend to act as your personal mentor, checking you are executing the habit, especially during the critical first 40-days!

So, instead of over-committing to multiple New Year Resolutions you know you will never stick to, why not try picking one killer habit and sticking to it for 40 days? Who knows where it might take you?

Its time to complete our look back at our favourite posts from 2016. Here are our top posts of 2016 from July to December, following the earlier post on the 1st half of the year.

July - What makes a winning brand team?

Our partner in Buenos Aries, Diego Kerner, posted on how to have a winning attitude that propels a team to engage senior management, enthuse the whole organisation and overcome the multiple roadblocks that occur in any brand strategy or innovation project. These qualities included self-confidence, ruthless focus and a hunger to grow.

August - FMCG brands get fit for the future

Our new partner Jon Goldstone joined us from Unilever, where he was UK VP of Marketing. In his first post he looked at how consumers goods brands needs to stay fit to compete in the future. He suggested the recent acquisitions by leading companies gave a clue about the way forward.

Unilever's $1billion acquisition of Dollar Shave Club buys access to new capabilities and new channels, including owning 'the route to consumer'

Danone’s $12.5bn acquisition of WhiteWave acquires a set of marketing skills that traditional FMCG companies have been struggling to develop organically – the ability to connect with a very specific target in a way that feels relevant and authentic, seamlessly blending traditional and social media.

September - How Snapchat keeps things fresh

This special post by Gen Z bloggers Jessica, my 18 year old daughter, and her boyfriend Lewis looked at how Snapchat has built a business valued at over £15 billion in only 4 years. Snapchat has done this by sticking to what made it successful at the start, whilst improving the basics of the service and adding new features to keep it fresh, such as face filters (see below). This has allowed it to maintain and build interest with its core target of Gen Z and Millenials.

October - Rebooting brand strategy for a digital age

In this post we shared findings from our our 9th brandgym survey. This showed that with so much time, effort and energy being spent on digital channel selection and execution, the fundamentals of brand strategy are being neglected. 91% of the marketing directors surveyed agreed that "the key to effective digital marketing is clear brand positioning" And yet most of the same marketing directors also agreed that, "with the focus on digital/social marketing, brand strategy gets overlooked". This risks brand equity being diluted over time as the brand message and experience get fragmented across an ever-increasing number of channels.

To inspire marketing and agency teams to rediscover the power of brand strategy we propose to "reboot" it for the digital age, including:

Injecting a greater sense of purpose into brand positioning

Gaining even deeper insight into consumers’ lives, hopes and concerns

Making brand positioning simpler and more visual for more inspiring creative briefs

November - The power of sonic branding

This post covered a fascinating talk called “The Power of Sound: Making Every Second Count,” by award-winning composer Joel Beckman. This hit a nerve with me, as I have long been a believer in the power of "sonic branding". Joel quoted research showing that brand advertising using sound or music fitting with the brand had 96% higher recall than advertising with no sound, or the wrong type of sound. For example, windscreen repair company Autoglass have used a musical slogan for many years: "Autoglass repair, Autoglass replace." This is used in the UK but also in France, where it is "Careless répare, Careless replace."

December: Brand stretch learning from Air BnB, Uber and Snap

In this post we looked at three cases of digital brand stretching are in fact quite different and have varying chances of success. Whilst Snap sunglasses seemed like a PR gimmick, Airbnb's stretch into offering travel services with Airbnb Trips seemed more promising.

The size of prize should be HIGH, with additional revenue but also a strengthening the core, making the home rental offering even more attractive, and adding to the core brand idea of 'Don't stay there, live there'. Ability to win is also HIGH, as the stretch builds on the brand's expertise in travel, and can also leverage the knowledge of the company's thousands of hosts. Many of the services such as hire cars and flight can be seamlessly and easy integrated into the website.

So there you have it, another year over, another 104 blog stories about brand-led growth which we hope have inspired you and given you some practical ideas for your own brand.

As we approach the end of the year, its time to look back and do a review of our favourite posts from 2016. We've done another 102 blog posts this year, two a week, every week, like we have since the blog started back in 2006. Phew.

So, here are our top posts of 2016 from January to June, with July to December to follow in the next post.

Jan: Why we need to learn to "fail better"

This was one of our slightly 'off-piste' posts that looks beyond brands and business to life in general. The post was inspired by one of Mathew Syed's brilliant columns in The Times, when he wrote that "A positive attitude to failure predicts resilience, drive and, ultimately, success." Mathew was writing about the rise of tennis player Stan Wawrinka from an "also-ran" outside the top 10 to number four in the world. He suggests a clue to this turnaround is in the tattoo on Wawrinka's left forearm (from Samuel Beckett’s novella, Worstward Ho) around the time his performance improved: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No Matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

This post was an important reminder than in today's digital age brand success still depends on a deep insight, as shown by the death of Friends Reunited last, one of the pioneers of social media. It launched in 2000 (below), a full four years before Facebook entered the market. And it was bought by broadcaster ITV for $250m in 2005. ITV sold it for a paltry $35m in 2009, and a few laters the pug has now been pulled, as reported here. The insight for the brand was around the desire of people to look up old school friends. The problem with the service proposition flowing from this insight is that it lacks "stickiness". Once you've checked out the people from your class and left a message for them, then what? Why go back?

Mar: Domino's digital drive turbo charges the core

This post showed how digital can grow your core business. It talked about how Domino's Pizza profits grew 18% vs. year ago by moving into online sales, which now account for 78% of all UK deliveries, using digital to change its business model, not just to "connect" or "engage" with consumers via social media. Digital channels have made ordering a pizza easier for consumers. Second, digital channels should have reduced costs, by having fewer people on the phone taking orders. Third, I imagine digital ordering is more accurate, with less room for human error.

April: Using neuro-research to refresh a brand property: Churchill the dog

This post looked at how new insight techniques using neuro-research helped demonstrate the enduring power of Churchill Insurance's distinctive brand property, Churchill the dog. Churchill has been used by the company for 12 years to build distinctive memory structure, helping the brand by top-of-mind when people consider which insurer to use. As Churchill's Head of Marketing, Lucy Brooksbank, explained: "Churchill is our biggest brand asset helping create market-leading awareness despite only having the 6th spend highest spend in the insurance market." Near Insight mapped brain responses at each stage of the advert, with peaks in brain response coinciding with when Churchill the dog appeared in the communication, confirming that the campaign was effective.

May: TomTom on track to re-invent the core

This post showed how Tom Tom is managing the incredibly hard task of re-inventing its core business, with revenues growing +6% to €1.07billion in 2015, the first growth since 2009.The original core business of satellite navigation devices (sat nav) for cars was disrupted by the arrival of smartphones with free built-in satellite navigation. TomTom re-defined their market as "navigation and mapping services" rather than "satnavs" to inspire and guide re-invention of the core. TomTom now has four key business areas, with growth in the newer areas finally offsetting the decline in the original sat nav business.

Consumer, including the original sat nav business, in addition to wearable technology like sports watches

Licensing, such as the partnership with Apple for iPhone mapping, and more recently with Uber

Telematics for managing fleets of lorries

Automotive, supplying mapping to car manufacturers

June: Leadership lessons from Eddie Jones and England rugby

As a rugby fan, I couldn't resist having this as one of the posts of the year. And I'm feeling rather smug at having predicted the success of England's rugby coach Eddie Jones. Back in November 2015, when England were ranked a lowly 8th in the world, I posted that "I believe, and hope, that Jones' leadership will produce better results." In June I posted about how a healthy and long over-due refocusing on performance was paying off, in contrast with the disastrous approach of previous head coach, Stuart Lancaster, who was on an ultimately fruitless mission to create the 'right culture'. By June England had won all eight of their matches in 2016, sealing a first "Grand Slam" since 2003 (where they beat Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Italy).

Well, fast forward to today and England have won all 13 games, and are ranked number 2 in the world. I suggested this was achieved by focusing on the right "playing model" (like a business model in the business world) that remembered and refreshed what made England rugby successful in the past.

So, there you have the first half of the 2016 top posts. In the final post of 2016 we'll look at the top posts from the second half of the year.

The view from the Taylor household is that the Marks and Spencer Xmas campaign, 'Christmas with Love from Mrs. Claus', has outdone John Lewis this year for combining emotional 'sizzle' and 'product sausage' (an entertaining 3 minute masterpiece below). So it was interesting to get some first-hand insight into the campaign from Ira Dubinsky, the UK retailer's "Head of Christmas" (job titles don't come cooler than that). Below I share some highlights from our conversation, supplanted with extracts from Ira's recent blogpost on the campaign.

1. Building on insight

The first insight that inspired the campaign was about the relationship between M&S and the gift purchaser/giver. "Whilst M&S is known for amazing Christmas food and gifts, these products are made even more amazing when the customer adds their own special touch," explained Ira. "For instance, a Christmas tree is just a tree until you decorate it and a joint of meat is truly made special when you serve it as the centrepiece in your Christmas meal." In the case of the Mrs Claus campaign, a boy is portrayed choosing just the right model and colour of shoe for his sister.

The other key insight in developing the campaign related to the core target. M&S serves customers with a broad demographic profile. But female customers are particularly important and even more so at Christmas, playing the central role in most family celebrations. M&S cleverly recognises and celebrates women by dramatising the role that Mrs Claus plays, portraying her in a modern and glamorous way, with Santa being only a supporting character in the story.

2. Brand as co-star

The part of this story about the love expressed by the gift giver is close to where John Lewis have played in past years. However, as I posted here, this year they moved away from this with their Boxer campaign, a much less emotionally compelling and heart-tugging story. This leaves a nice space for M&S to fill. The Mrs Claus campaign also gives a major role to the brand, bigger than the one John Lewis has in their campaign. The story brings to life "the incredible alchemy that results when customers and M&S come together," as Ira puts it.

3. Add some sizzle

The M&S campaign tells a story about the brand and product offer (sausage) in an emotionally compelling way (sizzle). This emotional story-telling component aids processing using 'system 1' thinking that is "automatic, unconscious and impulsive", as Ira points out, helping create distinctive memory structure. Importantly, the M&S brand, brought to life as Mrs Claus, plays a central, starring role in the campaign.

Further sizzle was added by getting the very best talent involved to deliver top-notch production values. I was amazed to hear that Ira and the team managed to get Tom Hooper, the director of Oscar-winning movies The King's Speech and The Danish Girl, to direct the film; what a coup. This helps explain why it such spectacular and amazing looking mini masterpiece.

4. Amplify with social media

The Mrs Claus campaign is a good example of 'old' and social media working together to amplify one another. The team launched the brand film simultaneously on TV and online. To encourage people to talk about the brand online, M&S partnered with Twitter to create a cute custom emoji when people used the hashtag #lovemrsclaus.

A 'war room' of writers and designers were on hand to respond in real-time on social media, publishing personalised responses. Mrs. Claus poked fun at Aldi’s carrot being food for the Claus reindeer invited kids to write letters to her. Ira and the team were "overwhelmed by both the volume and sentiment of the conversation." Within hours thousands of contacts had taken place with 98% positive. It seemed that "People were falling in love with Mrs. Claus".

5. Sell more stuff

Last and definitely not least, the campaign helped sell more stuff. How refreshing to see some commercial nous being brought to social and digital media. Ira worked with the product teams to create Mrs Claus merchandise, so you can 'buy the look' by clicking on 'Mrs Claus' Picks' and, of course, purchase the red shoes given as a gift in the film.

In conclusion, Christmas with Love from Mrs. Claus builds on insight to create a distinctive communication campaign that tells a brand story in an emotionally compelling way, amplified digitally to connect and sell more stuff.

"Uber, Airbnb and Snapchat are creating side businesses to (each) show their company can move beyond its central business," according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The article suggests a key motivation for this brand stretching by tech companies is justifying sky-high valuations, such as Snapchat's $18billion price tag, ahead of expected initial public offerings (IPOs).

I suggest below that these three cases of digital brand stretching are in fact quite different and have varying chances of success. I start with the least promising, Snap sunglasses, go on to Uber Eats and finish with the most promising, Airbnb's travel offering.

Snap Sunglasses: PR-led brand stretch

Until recently Snapchat was know for a simple, highly popular messaging app. In September 2016 it shortened its company name to Snap and launched into hardware with $130 camera-equipped sunglasses and began calling itself a camera company, as reported here. "We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate," states the company's website.

This brand stretch has taken Snap into a totally different category from the core app business. This has created some buzz for the brand, with WSJ reporting that "roving vending machines around the U.S. have inspired Snapchat fanatics to wait for hours in line to buy the device". But beyond the PR value, this feels like a bit of a gimmick:

Size of prize LOW: how many people are really going to want to walk around wearing Snap sunglasses? This is a highly competitive market with a plethora of highly aspirational brands, from sunglass experts like RayBan to fashion labels like Tom Ford and Prada

Ability to win LOW: just as importantly, this is a digital app business who knows nothing about hardware creation, production, distribution or marketing.

Google, with all its resources and brand equity, failed to make Google Glass a big success, so I struggle to see how Snap will do any better.

Uber Eats: technology-led stretch

Uber has an even bigger job to justify its valuation, which is reported to be a mind-boggling $68 billion! The brand has stretched from its taxi hailing core business into food delivery with Uber Eats, with the rather lofty ambition of “changing the logistical fabric of cities.” This is what I would call a 'technology-led' stretch. It is based on finding new uses for the company's capabilities in online ordering, scheduling and transportation, rather than building on what has made the brand famous from a consumer stand-point. I'd rate the chances of Uber Eats becoming a significant, profitable long term business as medium to low:

Size of prize LOW: there is a clearly a need for food delivery in major cities, and there is a link, albeit weak, between the Uber brand transporting people and transporting food. But the market is highly competitive, with Uber up against specialists for whom food delivery is their core business, such as Deliveroo and Just Eats in the UK

Ability to win MED/LOW: Uber has tech for order placing and navigation. But the Uber Eats platform is more complex to run, as it now has to manage thousands of relationships with restaurants and cafés, not just the drivers. It has to persuade these food providers that it is a better bet than the expert food delivery brands mentioned above.

Airbnb Trips: stretch from the core

Last, and most promising, is Airbnb stretch into offering travel services with Airbnb Trips. The site plans to become "a one-stop shop offering excursions, restaurant reservations and eventually flights and car rentals", according to the WSJ report of a recent conference for thousands of the site’s hosts, where CEO Brian Chesky said his company would “make travel magical again.” The home-rental site has been testing for the last two years new travel-related services such as skateboarding lessons and nude photo shoots (huh?). This seems to be a much more promising stretch:

Size of prize HIGH: first, there is a chance for some additional revenue, with Airbnb taking a cut of any additional services sold. But what is really powerful about this brand stretch is how it strengthens the core, making the home rental offering even more attractive, and adding to the core brand idea of 'Don't stay there, live there', that I posted on here.

Ability to win HIGH: the stretch builds on the brand's expertise in travel, and can also leverage the knowledge of the company's thousands of hosts. Also, many of the services such as hire cars and flight can be seamlessly and easy integrated into the website. This can be done via a handful of big, strategic alliances in contrast to the nightmare take of Uber negotiating with thousands of restaurants.

In conclusion, these new-age digital brands attempts to stretch illustrate the fundamental and enduring principles of brand stretch: leverage your band equities and capabilities to add value in a new market, in a way that reinforces your core business.

Receiving an online order is not the most romantic moment you can have. This is why many brands try to give a personal touch by adding 'a goodie', especially now with Christmas coming up. Shame most of those goodies are nonsense stuff that has nothing to do with the brand you’ve just ordered and seem to be leftovers from a container arriving from China!

It doesn’t need to be that way. With a bit of creativity online retailers can create giveaways that are truly on brand and can work as long term ‘service signature’. A great example of this is Yumeko, a Dutch brand of organic & fair trade bed linen and home accessories that I blogged about earlier here.

With every order you get a small bag of fragrant lavender to refresh your linen cupboard. This totally ‘on brand’ goodie fits with their vision of softness and peaceful sleep, is high quality and unexpected. Cleverly, it enhances the brand experience of using the bed linen.

Nice, but that’s not all. This ‘'service signature’ has a story of its own

The lavender bags are made with leftovers from their organic cotton sheets and are filled with each with 12gr of organic French lavender. This job is done by Sophie, Fred, Ellie and other Yumeko ‘colleagues’ who are part of a local Dutch disabled Association that Yumeko works with. So a social purpose is baked into the customer experience. Yumeko made beautiful portraits and interviews or those ‘colleagues’ and shared it online on their blog here.

In conclusion, the key tips from the Yumeko story to sleep on if you're gonna make goodies:

1. make them on-brand

2. execute with excellence. No cheap crap please!

If your goodies are on vision AND well executed AND executed consistently over time they can become a distinctive brand property that customers will actually look forward to in their next order, and the one after that.